The under reported fall of a small North African country called, Tunisia, sent ripples throughout the region and nowhere has the sound resonated more than in Egypt. With its 80 million inhabitants, economic girth and long cultural history, Egypt is perhaps one of the most significant leaders of both the Middle East and Africa. Its central position between the two regions also controls the doorway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal. The only other way to navigate between the two bodies of water would be to circumnavigate the continent of Africa.

The country was among the first in the Middle East to recognize and attempt relations with Israel. The move so enraged Egypt’s Arab allies that they expelled Egypt from the Arab League and the decision proved lethal for the leader who had the courage to make it.

President Anwar Sadat was assassinated two years after signing the 1979 Camp David Accords that made peace with Israel. An attack squad of Islamic extremists opposed to Egypt’s path of peace with the Jewish state leapt from a military vehicle during a parade celebrating the Suez Canal and in a firestorm of thrown grenades and machine gun fire, they murdered him in front of thousands of people.

Now cue the entrance of the recently deposed authoritarian ruler President Hosni Mubarak. He seized emergency security powers and preserved the peace with Israel in his succession. Both were maintained for the next three decades.

Mubarak may have had the title of president, but his position and term of power has been dependent on the centralization of executive authority to the point of a police state. Over the decades his government has consistently violated just about every imaginable basic human right or civil liberty by using those longstanding emergency powers to control dissent, often in the name of preserving stability.

This combined with a number of other factors added up to a lack of opportunity for many of Egypt’s frustrated, lower classes which contributed greatly to fanning the flames of revolution.

Being able to watch the unfolding events in Egypt in our incredible age of mass media has been a rare historic opportunity for the average person to witness (in high definition if you want, even). The sparks to the revolt even incorporated the latest of social inventions such as networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. In 18 days, a popular movement inspired by a revolution in Tunisia swept hundreds of thousands of motivated protesters into the streets and toppled a seemingly stable, yet authoritarian, government.